Future Rising

In today’s episode of Future Rising , Andrew Maynard takes inspiration from William Anders’ 1968 photograph “Earthrise” as he considers our relationship to what comes next, and our collective and individual responsibilities to it.

Check out Bill Anders’ Earthrise photo here: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge...

Before the big bang there was no future and no past – just a pinprick of potential that existed outside what we now think of space and time. In today’s episode of Future Rising we go back to the beginning of everything, and the emergence of a universe that is governed by the flow of time between past and future.

If you’re interested in more on the origins of everything, this National Geographic video is a good place to sta...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we explore the physical and metaphorical role of light in guiding our thinking about the future, and how we’re connected to it.

If you’re interested in learning more on the role of caesium atoms in time keeping, check out this great article from the BBC:

Caesium: A brief history of timekeeping
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29476893

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we look at the many different roles of “movement” in our journey from the past to the future.

For more on gravitons, here’s an intriguing article about work being carried out by colleagues at Arizona State University:

'The Noise of Gravitons': ASU physicists win prestigious award for gravity research
https://news.asu.edu/20200601-discoveries-noise-gravitons-asu-physicists-wi...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we grapple with the very fabric of the future as we talk about time, and how it impacts our lives and our thoughts.

For more on Steven Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, this is a great article in the Washington Post:

What made Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ so immensely popular
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/14/what-made-hawkings-a-brief-his...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we explore that most elusive and yet important of concepts when it comes to the future: Entropy.

For more on entropy, I’d highly recommend this video from Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsY4WcQOrfk

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, check out http://futurerisingbook.com

We’ll be positing new episodes of F...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we dive into an intriguing theory developed by MIT professor Jeremy England that ties together entropy and the emergence of life on earth.

You can read more about England’s ideas in this Scientific American article from 2014:

A New Physics Theory of Life: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

For more on the book Future Rising: A Jou...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we begin to journey from the world of physics to the world of biology, and the remarkable future-changing power of evolution.

For a highly recommended primer on evolution, check out this Crash Course video by John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92oHNd8vFwo

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow,...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we look at a basic evolutionary trait that lies at the heart of how we’re connected with the future: Anticipation.

And if you’re interested, here’s more on Paul the Octopus: https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/paul-the-octopus-scientific-or-psychic/

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, check out http://futurerisingbook.com

In today’s episode of Future Rising we consider something we all rely on, and yet can get us into trouble as we build a future that’s very different from the past: instinct.

If you’re interested in more on human behavior – and this touches on instinct but goes far beyond it – I’d highly recommend this talk by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman on system 1 and system 2 thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0

In today’s episode of Future Rising we consider the fundamental importance of how cause and effect govern the threads between past and future, and our ability to impact the future through our actions.

One of the trickier aspects of causality is where correlation—an apparent relationship between two things—is mistaken for a cause-effect relationship. We don’t go into this in the podcast, but if you’re interested in some of ...

In today’s episode of Future Rising we consider how memory is vital to connecting past effects with future causes, and how as a result it is essential to our ability to build a better future.

One of the stories mentioned in this episode is that of British musician Clive Wearing. You can read more about Wearing and how his memory loss profoundly affected his life in this quite compelling piece by Oliver Sachs: https://www....

In today’s episode of Future Rising we look at how learning allows us to move beyond instinct as we navigate the future.

Today’s podcast mentions the British scientist Michael Faraday. You can find out more about this highly influential yet often overlooked experimenter here: https://www.aaas.org/genius-michael-faraday   

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, check ou...

In today’s episode of Future Rising, we consider how intention affects not only how we think about the future, but our attitudes toward changing it.

In this episode I refer to the Terminator movies, and John Connor’s famous line “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

It is, admittedly, a bit of a trivial link, but it does illuminate the difference between being passive versus ac...

In this episode we explore an aspect of our connection with the future that is both highly important, and extremely hard to pin down: intelligence.

For more on intelligence, check out Hank Green’s Crash Course video on the topic – highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xTz3QjcloI 

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, check out http://futurerisingbook.c...

In this episode we consider how knowledge fuels our understanding of the future and our various relationships to it.

Read, listen to and watch J. F. Kennedy’s 1962 Moon speech here: https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, check out http://futurerisingbook.com

We’ll be positing new episodes of Future Rising on Monday’s W...

In this episode, which is also the last in this season of Future Rising, we begin pulling together the threads from the past few weeks as we explore how reason helps us not only peer into the future, but begin to design it.

If you’ve enjoyed listening, please subscribe and let others know. And season 2 will be here before you know it!

For more on the book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomor...

If you’ve been listening to season one of Future Rising, you’ll know that most podcast episodes are short and hopefully insightful and engaging readings from the book Future Rising.

This episode is different – it’s a lot longer for a start. As we’re currently in between seasons, I thought I’d post a bonus episode that captures some of the thinking and reasoning behind the book and the podcast.

This episode is bas...

In this first episode of season 2, we start to look at what makes us uniquely human – starting with our feelings.

If you're interested in an intriguing perspective on feelings and the future, you might want to check out this article that asks how people feel about the future, from an exhibit hosted by the V&A Museum in London: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/how-do-you-feel-about-the-future

For more on th...